Saturday 24 October 2015

Matt Ridley: “Do people mind more about inequality than poverty?” (So what if somebody else has a yacht?)

A post at Reason and Reality, tag line "If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention" by Colin Lawson. Which I came to via Twitter.

1 comment:

  1. Oh, go on then, I'll bite. Take:

    "Ordinary people in London, working hard, in full time jobs, are unable to make ends meet because housing costs are inflated by the super-rich. With no hope of buying a house and unable to afford the rents people are forced to move elsewhere..."

    This isn't true. There are 8.5 million people living in London. Only a tiny number of them are the super rich. Being very generous to you, that leaves say 8 million people ranging from poor to really rather well off who live in London. And London's population is not shrinking, as your logic would have us conclude. The super-rich are not, for example, buying up terraces of hundreds of houses containing thousands of people and converting them into mansions for the few; no, they are buying already existing mansions.

    Of course, you haven't defined "super rich" so I've no idea what your threshold is. You talked about wealth; you need ~ $700k to be in the top 1% (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp) so in that way any couple with a house in a decent part of London and a reasonable pension is in the top 1%. This will include a great number of "ordinary people".

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